The ‘Floating Baroness’ and the ‘Queen of the Skis’ : two women ski jumpers in the early 20th century

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Deutscher übersetzter Titel:Die "Schwebende Baronin" und die "Königin der Ski" : zwei weibliche Skispringerinnen im frühen 20. Jahrhundert
Autor:Hofmann, Annette Ruth
Erschienen in:The international journal of the history of sport
Veröffentlicht:29 (2012), 2 (Sport and the emancipation of European women: the struggle for self-fulfilment), S. 247-258, Lit.
Format: Literatur (SPOLIT)
Publikationstyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
Medienart: Gedruckte Ressource Elektronische Ressource (online)
Sprache:Englisch
ISSN:0952-3367, 1743-9035
DOI:10.1080/09523367.2012.641217
Schlagworte:
Online Zugang:
Erfassungsnummer:PU201304003174
Quelle:BISp

Abstract des Autors

Recently women's ski jumping has attracted public attention because a group of female jumpers went to court to fight the IOC decision to exclude them from the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. After almost nine months in court the jumpers lost their case, and maybe their story will disappear into nowhere again. Especially before the Olympics it was a worthwhile story for the media to report about. Thus not only the existence of women's ski jumping but also this case of gender discrimination was spread all over the world. For many people not involved in ski sports it was the first time they heard about women's ski jumping. However, ski jumping is not a new sport for women. First sources tell us about ski jumping women in nineteenth-century Norway. Not until the twentieth century do we hear about women performing this sport on the European continent and in North America. Throughout the history of this sport, there were always examples of extraordinary women jumpers. Two of them from different European countries, living in different periods, shall be the focus of this paper. The Austrian Baroness Paula Lamberg (1887-1927) from the famous Austrian ski resort Kitzbühel, and the Norwegian Johanne Kolstad (1913-1997), who reached international fame due to her long jumps in the 1930s. Considering the fact that ski jumping was and still is seen as a male-only sport, the questions arise, who were these women who lived in different parts of the world during different times and managed to receive recognition in a male-dominated sport? What were the social and cultural circumstances that made it possible for them to attain fame at a time in which women's participation in sports was very much restricted? Or were they simply a product of the rising emancipatory currents of the time? After an introduction to the beginnings of women's ski jumping and the arguments opposed to it, this paper tries to find answers to these questions and build a link to the image of the ‘New Women’ in the early twentieth century who also had some impact on women's sports participation. Verf.-Referat